“The stranger speaks right,” broke in the fair man with the watery eyes. “It should be upwards ever! From the man to the superman! From the structure to the superstructure! I will tell you the fault of your architecture; it is not upon the nature-energy based! Your churches are larger at the bottom, smaller at the top. But the all- mother-born trees are smaller at the bottom, larger at the top. So should this cathedral be. In the first floor two domes, in the second floor three domes, in the third floor, and so on, ever branching, ever increasing, each landing larger than the last one, till at last...”

  He had flung up his arms in a rigid ecstasy. His voice failed, but his arms remained vertical; so we all murmured “Quite so.”

  Then Dr. Blood said in a curious, cool voice, “Now you trust the expert. I’ll put this place right in two minutes.”

  He strode into the interior, and then we heard three taps. And the next moment this dome that filled the sky shook as in an earthquake, and tilted sideways. Nothing could express the enormous unreason of that familiar scene silently gone wrong.

  I awoke to hear the hoarse voice of the yawning man, speaking for the first and last time in my ear.

  “Do you see,” he whispered, “the sky is crooked?”

  The Giant

  When Jack the Giant Killer really first saw the giant his experience was not such as has been generally supposed. If you care to hear it I will tell you the real story of Jack the Giant Killer. To begin with, the most awful thing which Jack first felt about the giant was that he was not a giant. He came striding across an interminable wooded plain, and against its remote horizon the giant was quite a small figure, like a figure in a picture — he seemed merely a man walking across the grass. Then Jack was shocked by remembering that the grass which the man was treading down was one of the tallest forests upon that plain. The man came nearer and nearer, growing bigger and bigger, and at the instant when he passed the possible stature of humanity Jack almost screamed. The rest was an intolerable apocalypse.

  The giant had the one frightful quality of a miracle: the more he became incredible the more he became solid. The less one could believe in him the more plainly one could see him. It was unbearable that so much of the sky should be occupied by one human face. His eyes which had stood out like bow windows, became bigger yet, and there was no metaphor that could contain their bigness; yet still they were human eyes. Jack’s intellect was utterly gone under that huge hypnotism of the face that filled the sky; his last hope was submerged, his five wits all still with terror.

  But there stood up in him still a kind of cold chivalry, a dignity of dead honour that would not forget the small and futile sword in his hand. He rushed at one of the colossal feet of this human tower, and when he came quite close to it the ankle-bone arched over him like a cave. Then he planted the point of his sword against the foot and leant on it with all his weight, till it went up to the hilt and broke the hilt, and then snapped just under it. And it was plain that the giant felt a sort of prick, for he snatched up his great foot into his great hand for an instant; and then, putting it down again, he bent over and stared at the ground until he had seen his enemy.

  Then he picked up Jack between a big finger and thumb and threw him away; and as Jack went through the air he felt as if he were flying from system to system through the universe of stars. But, as the giant had thrown him away carelessly, he did not strike a stone, but struck soft mire by the side of a distant river. There he lay insensible for several hours; but when he awoke again his horrible conqueror was still in sight. He was striding away across the void and wooded plain towards where it ended in the sea; and by this time he was only much higher than any of the hills. He grew less and less indeed; but only as a really high mountain grows at last less and less when we leave it in a railway train. Half an hour afterwards he was a bright blue colour, as are the distant hills; but his outline was still human and still gigantic. Then the big blue figure seemed to come to the brink of the big blue sea, and even as it did so it altered its attitude. Jack, stunned and bleeding, lifted himself laboriously upon one elbow to stare. The giant once more caught hold of his ankle, wavered twice as in a wind, and then went over into the great sea which washes the whole world, and which, alone of all things God has made, was big enough to drown him.

  The Tree of Pride

  If you go down to the Barbary Coast, where the last wedge of the forest narrows down between the desert and the great tideless sea, you will find the natives still telling a strange story about a saint of the Dark Ages. There, on the twilight border of the Dark Continent, you feel the Dark Ages. I have only visited the place once, though it lies so to speak, opposite to the Italian city where I lived for years, and yet you would hardly believe how the topsy-turveydom and transmigration of this myth somehow seemed less mad than they really are, with the wood loud with lions at night and that dark red solitude beyond. They say that the hermit St. Securis, living there among trees, grew to love them like companions; since, though great giants with many arms like Briareus, they were the mildest and most blameless of the creatures; they did not devour like the lions, but rather opened their arms to all the little birds. And he prayed that they might be loosened from time to time to walk like other things. And the trees were moved upon the prayers of Securis, as they were at the songs of Orpheus. The men of the desert were stricken from afar with fear, seeing the saint walking with a walking grove, like a schoolmaster with his boys. For the trees were thus freed under strict conditions of discipline. They were to return at the sound of the hermit’s bell, and, above all, to copy the wild beasts in walking only — to destroy and devour nothing. Well, it is said that one of the trees heard a voice that was not the saint’s; that, in the warm green twilight of one summer evening it became conscious of something sitting and speaking in its branches in the guise of a great bird, and it was that which once spoke from a tree in the guise of a great serpent. As the voice grew louder among its murmuring leaves the tree was torn with a great desire to stretch out and snatch at the birds that flew harmlessly about their nests, and pluck them to pieces. Finally, the tempter filled the tree-top with his own birds of pride, the starry pageant of the peacocks. And the spirit of the brute overcame the spirit of the tree, and it rent and consumed the blue-green birds till not a plume was left, and returned to the quiet tribe of trees. But they say that when spring came all the other trees put forth leaves, but this put forth feathers of a strange hue and pattern. And by that monstrous assimilation the saint knew of the sin, and he rooted that one tree to the earth with a judgement so that evil should fall on any who removed it again.

  A Legend of Saint Francis

  St. Francis, playing in the fields of heaven, had been informed by his spiritual great-grandson Friar Bacon (who takes an interest in new and curious things) that the modern world was just about to witness a great celebration in honour of the great founder. St. Francis, out of his great love for his fellows, felt an ardent desire to be present; but the Blessed Thomas More, who had seen the modern world begin and had his doubts, shook his head with the melancholy humour that made him so charming a companion. “I fear,” he said, “that you will find the present state of the world very distressing to your hopes of Holy Poverty and charity to all. Even when I left (rather abruptly) men were beginning to grab land greedily, to pile up gold and silver, to live for nothing but pleasure and luxury in the arts.” St. Francis said he was prepared for that; but although he came down to the world in that sense prepared, as he walked about the world he was puzzled.

  At first he had a kind of hope, not unmixed with holy fear, that all the people had become Franciscans. Nearly all of them were without land. Large numbers of them were without homes. If they had really all of them been grabbing property, it seems strange that hardly any of them had got any. Then he met a Philanthropist, who professed to have ideals very similar to his own, though less clearly expressed; and St. Francis had occasion to apologise, with all his characteristic good manners, for the fact that his vow forbade him to carry any gold or silver in his purse. “I never carry money about myself,” said the Philanthropist nodding; “Our system of credit has become so complete that coins seem quite antiquated.” Then he took out a little piece of paper and wrote on it; and the saint could not but admire the beautiful faith and simplicity with which this scribble was received as a substitute for cash. But when he went a little deeper into conversation with the Philanthropist, he grew more and more doubtful and troubled in his mind. For instance, it was doubtless in consequence of some highly respectable Vow that the Philanthropist and most other commercial persons were dressed in black and grey and other sober colours. Indeed they seemed, in a rapture of Christian humility, to have made themselves as hideous as possible; the shapes of their hats and trousers being quite horrible to the artistic sensibilities of the Italian. But when he began to talk with gentle awe about their sacrifice, and how hard he had himself felt it even to surrender the crimson cloaks and capes, the gilded belts and swordhilts of his own gay and gallant youth, he was mystified to find that the merchants of his own guild in this epoch had never felt even the obvious temptation to wear swords. More and more did he feel convinced that they were of a finer spiritual order than himself; but, as this was no new feeling for him, he continued to confide in these ascetics about the defects of his own asceticism. He told them how he had cried: “I may yet have children,” and how much family life attracted him; at which they all laughed, and began to explain that few of them had any children or wanted any. And as they went on talking, that understanding which is terribly alert even in the most innocent of saints, began to creep upon him like a dreadful paralysis. It is uncertain whether he fully understood why and how they denied themselves this natural pleasure; but it is certain that he went rather hurriedly back to heaven. Nobody knows what saints really think; but he was said by some to have concluded that the bad men of his time were better than the good men of ours.

  The Angry Street

  I cannot remember whether this tale is true or not. If I read it through very carefully I have a suspicion that I should come to the conclusion that it is not. But, unfortunately, I cannot read it through very carefully, because, you see, it is not written yet. The image and idea of it clung to me through a great part of my boyhood; I may have dreamt it before I could talk; or told it to myself before I could read; or read it before I could remember. On the whole, however, I am certain that I did not read it. For children have very clear memories about things like that; and of the books of which I was really fond I can still remember not only the shape and bulk and binding, but even the position of the printed words on many of the pages. On the whole, I incline to the opinion that it happened to me before I was born.

  At any rate, let us tell the story now with all the advantages of the atmosphere that has clung to it. You may suppose me, for the sake of argument, sitting at lunch in one of those quick-lunch restaurants in the City where men take their food so fast that it has none of the quality of food, and take their half-hour’s vacation so fast that it has none of the qualities of leisure. To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. They all wore tall shiny hats as if they could not lose an instant even to hang them on a peg, and they all had one eye a little off, hypnotized by the huge eye of the clock. In short they were the slaves of the modern bondage, you could hear their fetters clanking. Each was, in fact, bound by a chain; the heaviest chain ever tied to a man — it is called a watch-chain.

  Now, among these there entered and sat down opposite to me a man who almost immediately opened an uninterrupted monologue. He was like all the other men in dress, yet he was startlingly opposite to them all in manner. He wore a high shiny hat and a long frock coat, but he wore them as such solemn things were meant to be worn; he wore the silk hat as if it were a mitre, and the frock coat as if it were the ephod of a high priest. He not only hung his hat up on the peg, but he seemed (such was his stateliness) almost to ask permission of the hat for doing so, and to apologize to the peg for making use of it. When he had sat down on a wooden chair with the air of one considering its feelings and given a sort of slight stoop or bow to the wooden table itself, as if it were an altar, I could not help some comment springing to my lips. For the man was a big, sanguine-faced, prosperous-looking man, and yet he treated everything with a care that almost amounted to nervousness.

  For the sake of saying something to express my interest I said, “This furniture is fairly solid; but, of course, people do treat it much too carelessly.”

  As I looked up doubtfully my eye caught his, and was fixed as his was fixed, in an apocalyptic stare. I had thought him ordinary as he entered, save for his strange, cautious manner; but if the other people had seen him then they would have screamed and emptied the room. They did not see him, and they went on making a clatter with their forks, and a murmur with their conversation. But the man’s face was the face of a maniac.

  “Did you mean anything particular by that remark?” he asked at last, and the blood crawled back slowly into his face.

  “Nothing whatever,” I answered. “One does not mean anything here; it spoils people’s digestions.”

  He leaned back and wiped his broad forehead with a high handkerchief; and yet there seemed to be a sort of regret in his relief.

  “I thought perhaps,” he said in a low voice, “that another of them had gone wrong.”

  “If you mean another digestion gone wrong,” I said, “I never heard of one here that went right. This is the heart of the Empire, and the other organs are in an equally bad way.”

  “No, I mean another street gone wrong,” he said heavily and quietly, “but as I suppose that doesn’t explain much to you, I think I shall have to tell you the story. I do so with all the less responsibility; because I know you won’t believe it. For forty years of my life I invariably left my office, which is in Leadenhall Street, at half-past five in the afternoon, taking with me an umbrella in the right hand and a bag in the left hand. For forty years two months and four days I passed out of the side office door, walked down the street on the left-hand side, took the first turning to the left and the third to the right, from where I bought an evening paper, followed the road on the right-hand side round two obtuse angles, and came out just outside a Metropolitan station, where I took a train home. For forty years two months and four days I fulfilled this course by accumulated habit: it was not a long street that I traversed, and it took me about four and a half minutes to do it. After forty years two months and four days, on the fifth day I went out in the same manner, with my umbrella in the right hand and my bag in the left, and I began to notice that walking along the familiar street tired me somewhat more than usual. At first I thought I must be breathless and out of condition; though this, again, seemed unnatural, as my habits had always been like clockwork. But after a little while I became convinced that the road was distinctly on a more steep incline that I had known previously; I was positively panting uphill. Owing to this no doubt the corner of the street seemed further off than usual; and when I turned it I was convinced that I had turned down the wrong one. For now the street shot up quite a steep slant, such as one only sees in the hilly parts of London, and in this part there were no hills at all. Yet it was not the wrong street. The name written on it was the same; the shuttered shops were the same; the lamp-posts and the whole look of the perspective was the same; only it was tilted upwards like a lid. Forgetting any trouble about breathlessness or fatigue I ran furiously forward, and reached the second of my accustomed turnings, which ought to bring me almost within sight of the station. And as I turned that corner I nearly fell on the pavement. For now the street went up straight in front of my face like a steep staircase or the side of a pyramid. There was not for miles round that place so much as a slope like that of Ludgate Hill. And this was a slope like that of the Matterhorn. The whole street had lifted itself like a single wave, and yet every speck and detail of it was the same, and I saw in the high distance, as at the top of an Alpine pass, picked out in pink letters the name over my paper shop.

  “I ran on and on blindly now, passing all the shops, and coming to a part of the road where there was a long grey row of private houses. I had, I know not why, an irrational feeling that I was on a long iron bridge in empty space. An impulse seized me, and I pulled up the iron trap of a coal hole. Looking down through it I saw empty space and the stars.

  “When I looked up again a man was standing in his front garden, having apparently come out of his house; he was leaning over the railings and gazing at me. We were all alone on that nightmare road; his face was in shadow; his dress was dark and ordinary; but when I saw him standing so perfectly still I knew somehow that he was not of this world. And the stars behind his head were larger and fiercer than ought to be endured by the eyes of men.

  “‘If you are a kind angel,’ I said, ‘or a wise devil, or have anything in common with mankind, tell me what is this street possessed of devils.’

  “After a long silence he said, ‘What do you say that it is?’

  “‘It is Bumpton Street, of course,’ I snapped. ‘It goes to Oldgate Station.’

  “‘Yes,’ he admitted gravely; ‘it goes there sometimes. Just now, however, it is going to heaven.’

  “‘To heaven?’ I said. ‘Why?’

  “‘It is going to heaven for justice,’ he replied. ‘You must have treated it badly. Remember always that there is one thing that cannot be endured by anybody or anything. That one unendurable thing is to be overworked and also neglected. For instance, you can overwork women — everybody does. But you can’t neglect women — I defy you to. At the same time, you can neglect tramps and gipsies and all the apparent refuse of the State, so long as you do not overwork them. But no beast of the field, no horse, no dog can endure long to be asked to do more than his work and yet have less than his honour. It is the same with streets. You have worked this street to death, and yet you have never remembered its existence. If you had owned a healthy democracy, even of pagans, they would have hung this street with garlands and given it the name of a god. Then it would have gone quietly. But at last the street has grown tired of your tireless insolence; and it is bucking and rearing its head to heaven. Have you never sat on a bucking horse?’